This session will help you understand how to identify mobile opportunities and best practices for capitalising on them. We will also review the most common approaches to optimising your website for mobile, the pros and cons and new signals Google will be rolling out to evaluate your mobile web presence.

8.
How does Google index & rank mobile sites?
When you search Google using a mobile phone you are searching the exact same
index as you would on a desktop
Usually Google sends mobile visitors directly to the mobile version so they don’t
need to be redirected
Mobile user experience & other factors will determine the rankings of the domain to
mobile searchers independently from desktop searchers
Currently there isn’t a huge difference in the search results, but there will be in
future.
http://searchengineland.com/the-definitive-guide-to-mobile-technical-seo-166066

10.
Always start with analytics
Analyse your desktop visitors against your mobile
visitors
How are you being affected by not optimising your
mobile experience?
What are the glaring differences between user
experiences?

12.
Do efforts need to be focused?
What are the biggest problem areas?
Delve into content metrics in analytics.
Which pages are seeing the highest
bounce rate?
This example shows a booking process
30% higher bounce rate

13.
Content opportunities
Having your buying guides
available on mobile is very
important

21.
Responsive design
Responsive design is a flexible design that
automatically resizes itself depending on the size of
the device being used.
One site for every screen.
This is Google's recommended configuration.

22.
Responsive pros and cons
Pros
Cons
Once implemented, compatible with
all current and future devices – no
maintenance costs
Expensive to implement as it may
require a site redesign
No duplication issues
Google friendly as it saves them
crawling your site multiple times
User Experience is limited to design

23.
Dynamically served HTML & CSS
This approach serves different CSS mark-up or content to a user
depending on their device
A user detect agent will determine which code to be shown
A huge benefit of this is that you can tailor not just design, but content,
depending on the device
In essence, there is multiple HTML/CSS mark-up on each page that shows
to different users based on their device

24.
Dynamic pros and cons
Pros
Cons
Content can be differentiated as well
as design
Costly to maintain as new pages need
to be coded multiple times
Customisation of the user journey
Technically the most complex of the
three options, leaving you more open
to doing something wrong
No duplication issues

25.
Mobile version (separate URL’s)
Using this approach, each desktop URL has an equivalent mobile
optimised URL
This is usually done in the following way:
www.example.com
m.example.com
When a user lands on the desktop version from a mobile device, the
website detects this and redirects them to the appropriate page on the
m.example.com site

26.
Mobile version pros and cons
Pros
Cons
Easier and cheaper to implement
Potential duplication issues
Content can be differentiated as well
as design
Indexing is more complex so content
will take longer to be indexed
Customisation of the user journey
Risk of penalisation if redirects aren’t
properly implemented

27.
Which to choose
Just because Google like responsive design doesn’t mean that this is the
best option for your business
In a lot of cases it is, but you should focus on your customers, what
experience are they demanding?
Does a mobile users journey differ from a desktop users journey? This all
needs to be researched before making a decision on this

29.
Each require very specific and different
methods of technical implementation.
Getting it wrong could put you in the
firing line for all sorts of issues.

30.
Google have issued clear
recommendations on what it
expects to see from mobile
optimised websites
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details

31.
Redirects
Redirects are a necessary evil with mobile sites, but it is
astounding how many people get this wrong
Under no circumstances should you blanket redirect
mobile users to your homepage – you will lose trust
and Google will penalise your mobile site
Have a comprehensive 301 redirect map in place
before the mobile version goes live

32.
Site speed
Remember that mobile users are often
visiting to your site through a 3G
connection
If your site has a slow load time then it
increases the chances of that user
returning to search
Use Googles PageSpeed Insights tool
to identify and fix issues
http://developers.google.com/speed/p
agespeed/insights/

33.
Mobile web crawler
If you have a mobile site then Google needs to be able to crawl this and
see that it exists
In order to do this, Google has a specific crawler for mobile devices
This needs to be allowed to crawl the site in your robots.txt
If you do not allow this, or inadvertantly block it, Google will not know
your mobile site exists
Source: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/googlebot-mobile

34.
Mobile only errors
Do not redirect mobile users to a mobile page that does
not exist, in this instance just send them to the desktop
site
iPhones and some Android devices can’t play flash, try to
avoid using this on any mobile optimised pages – Google
track this signal and actively do not show results that
contain flash to mobile users

35.
Analytics monitoring
Once a mobile offering has been implemented, user
engagement through mobile needs to be tracked
How has the implementation affected engagement?
Are users dropping off anywhere on their user journey?
Always be improving your experience

37.
How long do you have to engage a user?
3.8 seconds
Jacob Nielson – useit.com

38.
Your design 3.8 seconds to establish…
•
•
Relevance
Are you right for me?
Have you answered my
question?
•
•
Trust
Do you look credible?
Can I trust you with my
money?

39.
Or else…
The user returned to
search. You did not satisfy
their objectives.

40.
Return to Search
You have a few seconds to get
the visitors attention and
persuade them that they have
arrived at a site that will answer
their query
If they go back to Google that’s
a negative signal

42.
The current landscape
Google will penalise mobile results if you do not give
the user a good experience
Currently this is limited to faulty redirects and
smartphone only errors
Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/changes-in-rankings-ofsmartphone_11.html

43.
Google expects
“The goal of many of our ranking changes is to help searchers find sites that
provide a great user experience and fulfil their information needs.”
Matt Cutts
If you deliver a great user experience through desktop, Google expects
parity with mobile and desktop experiences
If you do not deliver this, Google may penalise the site in mobile search
results

44.
Tomorrows Landscape
A very different set of SERP’s for mobile and desktop dependent on
mobile experience
Site speed will become a ranking factor for mobile SERP’s – keep on top of
this
UX, UX, UX
Apps being indexing in Google and appearing in mobile searches (Google
KitKat) - "view in app" buttons in search results.